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Bosses don't have to be invulnerable to command their team's respect, writes Patrick Lencioni, and in fact an occasional display of vulnerability can help to inspire trust, loyalty and commitment. Admitting that a problem has you stumped or that you've made a mistake is the surest way to win over your workers and your customers, Lencioni writes, and gives you a major advantage over leaders who are afraid to fess up to their failings.

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Charismatic bosses can forge distinctive corporate cultures, but how can they ensure their creation will survive them? There are no guarantees, says Pat Lencioni, but it helps to give employees a clear idea of what the company is about, to be cautious about whom you promote and to be extremely reluctant to give up control of the hiring process. "Your goal should be that 100 percent of your people embody the one or two values that make your company truly special," Lencioni explains.

Michael Porter, the theorist who invented "competitive strategy," says "social legitimacy" is the next big management frontier, and that companies that behave well gain a huge advantage over their rivals. He's absolutely correct, writes Charles H. Green -- but ironically, Porter's own competitive-strategy ideas, with their focus on short-term victories, are emerging as a major obstacle to corporate legitimacy. "[H]is own doctrine of competition will continue to work against business solutions for social problems until and unless it rids itself of the poison of short-termism," Green writes.

Shopkeepers in New York's Chinatown have started demanding large cash payments from people caught shoplifting, and threatening to turn them over to the police or publicly name and shame them if they don't pay up. The practice is an import from China, where shopkeepers routinely post signs reading "Steal one, fine 10" to deter thieves.

Russia is launching an innovation city intended to rival Silicon Valley, but Leon Aron writes that the campaign will fall flat unless Moscow also tackles the climate of fear that pervades the modern Russian business world. Many companies remain under de facto state control, Aron notes, and entrepreneurs live in fear of the political machine.

Big, successful companies often find it hard to produce meaningful innovation at a scale that matches their ambitions, writes John Sviokla. One option is for companies to seed independent spinoffs to develop high-risk, high-reward projects, on the condition that the parent company gets first refusal on any inventions. That lets innovators work in a genuine startup culture, but still allows the bigger company to incorporate their successes into its own R&D process.